Just off Leicester Square in London, and down a bit, there’s a fancy door with three busts over the door. They are the figures of the biographers and historians who founded the museum housed inside, a museum whose patron is the Duchess of Cambridge, and which houses only one kind of painting, in a multitude of styles. The National Portrait Gallery.

A wall of busts from Queen Victoria’s reign

Me and Anne Boleyn

Detail of a woman’s hand and dress from the 1500’s

The National Portrait Gallery is one of those institutions that feels so British in it’s quirkiness. The gallery only contains portraits, with the focus being on the status of the sitter rather than the fame of the artist or the quality of the work. As you wander through, you’re surrounded by all different kinds of people who have achieved many different things in many different fields, all…